Trine Devs’ Shadwen Will Launch With Nifty Level Editor

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Shadwen [official site] is an upcoming stealth platformer from Trine creators Frozenbyte, which also has a focus on physics-based frolics. Interestingly, it adopts a nifty time-manipulation mechanic where time only moves when you do – similar to Superhot – and at launch will come with the same level editor the developers use.

Shadwen will task the eponymous assassin with offing a king, only to inadvertently stumbling across an orphan named Lily. She decides to tag along, and suddenly killing loads of guards in her presence seems less of a good idea. Which is why the ability to pause and rewind time should come in super handy as you rely on a mixture of stealth and more forcible ways to best your foes – such as flooring them with a seemingly endless supply of tumbling crates.

When Shadwen pounces from the shadows of development at an unspecified time later this year, it’ll also come with the same level editor that Frozenbyte use themselves. Here, you’ll be able to edit existing levels, create entire new ones and share whatever you come up with via the Steam Workshop. In a blog post, Frozenbyte say they’ve assigned a team to work on some user-friendly tutorials that’ll help players learn how it works. However, this brief video demonstrates what we’ll basically all wind up doing: blowing things up, repeatedly. Gotta love those physics.

In what became a sort-of meta game, Frozenbyte recently released a demo and said that the more people played, the lower they’d make Shadwen’s launch price. That event is now finished, settling on a $14.55 launch price tag – down from a $35 starting point. This will remain in place for the first week or two post-release depending on the platform, say Frozenbyte, but will rise by 15% thereafter.

I’m yet to give Shadwen a bash myself, but it looks really interesting. While the demo event is finished, the is still playable. Find it on Steam, GOG, or the Humble Store. Here’s another look at the most recent trailer:

There are Chrome/Firefox plugins that turn off YouTube comments. I would recommend it. (If you use ad-block you can also mark the comment field as an ad.)

I used to use Hide Fedora to block individual profiles but it doesn’t seem to work anymore and I can’t find another plugin to block users. Hide Fedora was awesome because it had the option to “turn users into cats.”

That’s quite a good idea actually. I used to use adblock to block the comments but it stopped working and i never bothered to fix it. Cheers

Also. I think my personal favourite terrible comment had to be.

“PCGamingMasterRace6 days ago (edited)
Why do I need to play as a privileged white female? We need more midget native american non-binary gendered disabled furries in games. I’m offended with this lack of diversity.﻿”

Or roughly translated “There is no such thing as discrimination, however this person has done something that breaks from the norm in a way i dislike, so i am going to discriminate against them, for doing something which a discriminatory person would disapprove of. However i still insist this discrimination is a fiction.

What put me off the demo, at least, was that apparently the whole thing is one long escort mission. I’d be scouting around for paths, patrol patterns and ways to ghost, when out of the bushes this little girl walks. Presumably I could’ve told her to stay put, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t want to babysit an NPC in a stealth game (or any game, preferably). So I guess I’m sitting this one out. Which is a shame, because I do like Frozenbyte and generally want to support them.

I quickly realized that the girl didn’t matter at all. The guards didn’t see her, or react to her at all; at one point she got stuck running into a guard’s legs, and he just kept on patrollin’. From then on I played as if the PC was haunted by a ghost.

On one hand, yay for not having to babysit her, but that raises more questions. Primarily: Is that just a bug? If not, why wouldn’t guards interact with her? I assume most places Shadwen visits are off limits, and having a child wander around should at least raise some suspicion. I’m usually easily immersed and hard to break out of it, but that’s just too jarring a thought for me.

And lastly, from the website it looks like Lily just… kind of decides to tag along. Why would an assassin be okay with that? I hope there’s a really good reason for it.

The Last Of Us did the same thing. Joel could be spotted but Ellie could walk right past enemies and not trigger them until you did. It was kind of silly but better than the alternative of having a stupid NPC ruin your sneak attacks.